Trump made 2 major moves that could put the future of the Republican Party in jeopardy

Supporters of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump at a campaign rally in Arizona.

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President Donald Trump’s pardon of Sheriff Joe Arpaio and decision to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program are widely viewed as his most direct attacks on Latinos.GOP strategists say the president may be doing long-term damage to the party’s appeal among Latinos, one of the country’s fastest-growing demographics.But some think Trump has a unique opportunity to pass immigration reform and turn the GOP’s future around.

Within 10 days, President Donald Trump made two deeply controversial decisions that many Republicans fear will spark an exodus of Latino voters from the GOP and threaten the long-term viability of the party.

Trump’s pardon of Joe Arpaio, the former Arizona sheriff who was convicted of racial profiling and held in contempt by a federal court, and his decision to rescind an Obama-era order temporarily protecting 800,000 young immigrants from deportation have been met with anger and despair from Latinos across the country and several Republican lawmakers.

Samuel Rodriguez, a Trump adviser and the leader of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, said Trump’s decision to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program would be a turning point for Latino voters.

“If the president breaks his promise to us to protect these children, they should be prepared for a mass exodus of the administration’s Hispanic support,” Rodriguez said in a statement last week.

Hector Barajas, a California-based GOP strategist whose parents and wife came to the US as undocumented immigrants, said Trump’s DACA decision has ushered in a “grand opportunity” for a deal on border security and immigration reform. But if Trump is unsuccessful in protecting DACA recipients, known as Dreamers, the consequences could be devastating.

“If nothing gets done in six months, if you start getting … actions where individuals are getting deported, I think this is going to have a very negative impact on Republicans – not just for this election cycle, but really for the next 10, 20 years,” Barajas said. “It makes it very difficult for a lot of Republicans who are running in swing states where you have a larger percentage of the vote that is a Latino population. I mean, at the end of the day elections are about addition and multiplication, not subtraction and division.”

Some GOP strategists argue that the decisions expose Trump’s disregard both for Latino voters and for the future success of the party.

“I don’t think many believe that he is ultimately concerned with the long-term viability of the Republican Party,” Brian Walsh, a GOP strategist and partner at the consulting firm Rokk Solutions, said of Trump. “He’s concerned about his own political success.”

The president, who won 29% of the Latino vote in the 2016 general election, according to exit polls – some of which are disputed – hasn’t shied away from anti-immigrant rhetoric, and some think his election proves there’s a way forward for the party without broadening its appeal among Latinos.

“That autopsy has been thrown out and burned over the last twelve months,” Walsh said. “But there is no long-term strategy. Republicans who simply point to Donald Trump winning the White House last November are deluding themselves if they’re not seeing the very clear demographics that are facing the party in 2020, 2024, and beyond … The math is clear on this.”

Matt Mackowiak, a GOP strategist and president of the Potomac Strategy Group, agrees.

“The Republican Party’s ability to win Hispanic votes is the single most important political challenge the party faces, period,” Mackowiak said. “And immigration is 80 or 90% of that.”

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Attorney General Jeff Sessions announcing the end of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

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Some – including Barajas – are raising the example of the California Republican Party, which passed a series of anti-immigrant referendums in the 1990s that pushed Latinos out of the party and to the polls, helping turn the state from purple to blue. But as Jason Sattler, a liberal pundit, pointed out in a recent USA Today column, the California GOP’s decline took years, and the national party might not feel the full impact of a Latino voter exodus for some time.

Barajas said Arpaio had earned a reputation among Latinos similar to that of Pete Wilson, California’s Republican governor who championed Proposition 187, which prohibited undocumented immigrants from using many government services.

Reed Galen, a GOP consultant and deputy campaign manager for Sen. John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign, said most Republicans in Congress recognized that “demographics are destiny” and that most favored comprehensive immigration reform.

“I don’t think any establishment Republicans were ever comfortable with his position and certainly the nativism and white nationalism,” Galen said, alluding to Trump’s campaign promises on immigration, including building a wall on the US-Mexico border and implementing a “Muslim ban.”

And most Republican voters oppose Trump’s decision on DACA – just 24% say the program’s recipients should be deported, according to one poll. (Most say they favor Trump’s pardon of Arpaio, however.)

But with most Republican voters and a good portion of Democratic and Republican lawmakers in support of protecting Dreamers and reforming the system, Barajas is optimistic.

“If we can get some sort of deal done on border security in addition to protecting DACA, and that is something that gets signed by the president – I mean, he could turn this whole thing around and come out looking like a savior,” he said.

He added that he had been heartened by Trump’s recent tweets assuring DACA recipients that they have “nothing to worry about,” at least for the next six months.

“If you had asked me this about three days ago,” he said, “I would have been a lot more pessimistic about it.”